Outstanding books for young people with disabilities

IBBY compiles a biennial international catalogue of recently published outstanding books for young people with disabilities. This identifies well-written and illustrated books for and about young people with different abilities, presented with dignity, emphasizing the person rather than the disability itself.

The full collection of nominated books is held at the Toronto Public Library and can be accessed online here. It is searchable by title, author, subject, format, keyword and language.

Further information about the Disability Collections and back catalogues can be found here.

IBBY UK Nominations for the Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities 2019

Selections for this are currently being considered. Do contact us if you would like to make a nomination or become involved.

IBBY UK Nominations for the Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities 2017

IBBY UK selected 23 books to put forward for consideration.

The selection was made by a panel of Clive Barnes, Becky Butler, Suzanne Curley and Carol Thompson, advised by inclusion consultant Alex Strick. The nominations include books specifically published or thought suitable for children with disabilities and books which feature disabled characters.

This is the largest number of titles ever put forward by IBBY UK for this list and reflects the growing number of published books featuring disabled children and young people as protagonists or major characters. They were selected from a preliminary list over twice as long and include Jacqueline Wilson’s updating of the Susan Coolidge classic What Katy Did, Sarah Crossan’s Carnegie-winning title One, Julia Donaldson’s What the Jackdaw Saw, and Cece Bell’s autobiographical novel El Deafo.

The panel would like to thank all those publishers who helped with this process. Read Dr Rebecca Butler’s blog on her experience on the selection panel.

Three of the UK nominations were included in the final list, which was announced in Bologna in 2017: Sarah Crossan’s One, published by Bloomsbury Children’s Books, and two Dorling Kindersley braille titles, Counting and It Can’t Be True.

An exhibition of the books on the 2015 international list toured several venues in the UK during 2016, visiting The Story Museum, Oxford; The Hive, Worcester; Seven Stories, Newcastle; and Brighton University School of Education. The 2017 international collection is planned to tour across the UK in 2018.

A tour of the 23 IBBY UK nominated books is also planned. If you are interested in borrowing these collections, please contact us.

About IBBY

The International Board on Books for Young People is a unique international alliance of everyone interested in children’s literature: academics, librarians, writers, illustrators, publishers, teachers, literacy workers, booksellers, parents and others.